182 SPRING AT THE CAPITAL. 



The affrighted and bewildered bird instantly 

 started for the open window, into which it 

 had no doubt been driven by a hawk.) 



The crow-blackbird has all the natural 

 cunning of his prototype, the crow. In one 

 of the inner courts of the Treasury building 

 there is a fountain with several trees grow- 

 ing near. By midsummer, the blackbirds 

 become so bold as to venture within this 

 court. Various fragments of food, tossed 

 from the surrounding windows, reward their 

 temerity. When a crust of dry bread defies 

 their beaks, they have been seen to drop it 

 into water, and when it had become soaked 

 sufficiently, to take it out again. 



They build a nest of coarse sticks and 

 mud, the whole burden of the enterprise 

 seeming to devolve upon the female. For 

 several successive mornings just after sun- 

 rise, I used to notice a pair of them fly- 

 ing to and fro in the air above me, as I 

 hoed in the garden, directing their course, 

 on the one hand, to a marshy piece of ground 

 about half a mile distant, and disappearing, 

 on their return, among the trees about the 

 Capitol. Returning, the female always had 

 her beak loaded with building material, while 

 the male, carrying nothing, seemed to act as 



